Night of the hunted

I grew up wanting to be a baseball player. And if I couldn’t be a baseball player I wanted to do the next-best thing: be a sportswriter.

Knowing this, my dad subscribed to three papers, thinking if this is the worst thing this boy gets involved in, it’ll be worth it. Plus, my dad was a softie and probably couldn’t say no to the boys who came and shyly ask if we might want to buy a subscription.

The power of the press occurred to me in high school. My best pal Dave and I put together a radio show and put out a weekly newspaper. I wrote the editorials. His mom worked for the school and he didn’t want to cause her any trouble. Our school had weird plumbing. You could only wash one hand at a time in the bathroom sinks. The faucet handle, after you turned it to get the water to run, would spring back and the water would shut off before you could ever get your hands wet. So my editorials helped get updated plumbing at the school. We got much better hot lunches and a few other things.

I was sports editor at the junior college paper and starting to get known a little bit. I came across the managing editor of the county seat paper at an Illini basketball came. A big man, 6-feet-5. I knew when he was and I was totally flattered that he knew who I was.

“Mr. Cade, young man. We have two summer internships and I’d like it very much if you came and worked for us.” So I did. One day, he, the editor and the sports editor approached my desk.

“Oh lord,” I thought, “what have I done now?”

But they’d all come to ask me to change gears in my life and instead of going to school full time at Illinois, go part-time and work full-time for them, with benefits and everything. And write sports!

It was my dream come true.

The next day they came back. They hadn’t run the idea across the publisher and she said no. But based on that offer, I had turned down another one, a really good one in Champaign. A part-time dream job. I asked those three guys that they had to make things right and to make a few calls. They did, and I would up working for both places, about 16 hours a day. I withheld my by-line. It wouldn’t look good for my name to appear in competing papers.

That paper in Champaign, Urbana, actually, was the best paper I ever worked for. It closed the following spring on April Fool’s Day. The staff scattered here and there.

After I graduated I got a call from one of those colleagues and he helped get me a job in an Illinois suburb of St. Louis.

My old red Vega was not reliable. I had an assignment to cover a state football playoff game about 90 miles away, so I called up Dented Fender and rented a car that looked and ran slightly better than my own. I made it to my destination hours early, giving myself plenty of time just in case.

I pulled into a hamburger joint and come inside. There is only me and one other fellow, who was short, squat and in his mid to upper 30s, maybe early 40s, sitting a few tables apart but facing me.

“Just passing through?” he asked. I noticed he had no food in front of him.

“No, I’m here to cover the football game.”

“Oh yeah? Which game is that?”

So I describe to him who is playing and what it’s for.

“You’re here awful early.”

“Well, yeah. I wanted to make sure I got here on time.”

“There’s a few hours to kill. You know, I’ve got a CB in my truck. I can call up a few pals and we can go fuck around.”

A cold feeling came over me. Real cold. “I didn’t come here to fuck around,” I said without a hint of emotion.

He didn’t respond. He just sat there watching me. I sat there, too, not daring to leave, fearing that he’d follow me and use that CB of his to call his buddies.

He eventually get up and leaves, but sits in his truck for interminable amount of minutes. I’m wondering “How am I gonna get out of this?” My heart pounds, my mind races.

This guy knows what I look like, he knows the car I’m driving, and where I’m going.

I’m beginning to fear for my life. He drives off, but the fear stays. Is he going to hunt me now or hunt me later, after the game is over and everyone is gone and he can call his buddies or maybe a cop pal to pull me over and fuck around.

I cover the game. It’s an easy, one-sided affair. All game long I scope the crowd. Nothing. After the game I get the coach to walk with me to my car as I ask a few final questions.

Safe so far. But I’m in this shitty car on this shitty night. And I’m full of dread. I dread starting the car. I dread pulling out of the parking lot, the only car along the deserted town. I’m just a sitting duck.

But nothing happens.

A few months later I’ve changed jobs and am working the news desk at a paper in the northwest Chicago suburbs one afternoon when shit hits the fan. Bodies have been discovered in the crawl space of a home in Des Plaines. The newsroom is flurry of phones ringing and reporters and editors shouting back and forth to each other.

Breaking news on the TV set. A photo appears of the man, the suspected killer. I turned to look. It was the same man. John Wayne Gacy.

My heart started pounding. It’s pounding even now. The terror of that night and what could have been is imprisoned in my mind. A life sentence.

This was first brought back for me during the me, too, movement when all these women came forward with their tales of terror and exploitation by predatory men. I cold never understand what it must have been like for them but believe me I could be understanding.

And still, nothing happened. I’ve never forgotten it.